An Otter.ai alternative that transcribes on your Mac, not in the cloud (2026)

At a glance

The thing that makes Otter Otter

Otter is a cloud service. That isn't a criticism — it's the design, and a lot follows from it that's genuinely good. Your transcripts are on every device and in the browser. Your team can open the same one. An Otter bot can join a Zoom call you're not even in. If you work with people on Windows and Android, Otter meets them where they are, and Nib simply doesn't — it's an Apple-only app.

But the same design means your voice has to go to Otter's servers to become text. Every meeting, every one-on-one, every half-formed idea you recorded on a walk. It's uploaded, transcribed in the United States on AWS, and kept.

And here's the part most people don't read, from Otter's privacy policy — Otter says it uses your data for:

De-identified means they've stripped the obvious identifiers. It does not mean deleted, and it does not mean your recording isn't part of what makes their model better. I looked for a clear switch to turn this off and couldn't find one in the policy.

Whether that bothers you depends entirely on what you record. For a public webinar, it doesn't. For a salary conversation, a client's confidential roadmap, a doctor's appointment, a therapy session, or a founder saying something out loud for the first time — a lot of people decide it does.

Nib's answer: don't send the audio anywhere

Nib transcribes on the device itself, using Apple's speech engine. Press record inside a note and your words become searchable text as you speak — on your Mac, on your iPhone, with the audio file staying exactly where it was made.

It isn't uploaded. It isn't synced to iCloud either, which is a deliberate choice: your notes sync across your devices, your recordings don't. The audio has one home.

That's not a promise about our servers being well-run. It's the absence of an upload. There's no bucket to breach, no retention window to trust, no policy that could change next year. On a Mac, Nib also captures the other side of a Zoom or Meet call, so you get the whole conversation — still without anything leaving the machine.

And because there's no server doing the work, there's no monthly meter on it. Transcription and search are free and unlimited; a free recording tops out at 30 minutes per session (Pro removes the cap), but there's no cap on how many you make or how many minutes you use in a month. No account, no email, no sign-up. Otter's free tier gives you 300 minutes a month total — about ten of those 30-minute conversations — and then stops until next month.

Where Nib also uses the cloud, and I'd rather say so

Turning a transcript into minutes — decisions, to-dos with owners, the questions nobody answered — is done by an AI model, and that model runs on a server. Nib is honest about the seam rather than hiding behind "on-device":

Transcription is on-device. Your voice never leaves. AI summarization is not. The transcript text goes to a proxy I run, and only to providers with a no-retention policy. Your notes are never used to train anything.

So if what you want is a fully local AI that summarizes without a connection, Nib isn't that, and neither is Otter. The difference is what's on the wire: Otter sends your voice, Nib sends text you can read first — and only when you ask for a summary. Everything else works with the network off.

When you should just use Otter

I'd rather you pick the right tool than pick mine.

• Your team isn't all on Apple devices. Nib has no Android or web version. Otter does.
• You need a bot to attend meetings for you. Nib records what your machine can hear; it doesn't join calls on your behalf.
• You need shared team workspaces with everyone editing the same transcript. Nib is a personal notepad that syncs across your devices.
• You need transcripts in a language Apple's on-device engine doesn't handle well. Otter's cloud models are strong at English, and the whole point of a cloud model is that it's bigger than what fits on your laptop.

Nib is a good fit if you take a lot of notes yourself, on Apple hardware, and you'd rather your recordings stay yours.

FAQ

Does Nib work offline?

Recording, transcription and search work with the network off — all three run on the device. AI features (minutes, chat, co-writing) need a connection, because the model runs on a server.

Does Nib upload my meeting audio?

No. The audio file stays on the device it was recorded on. It isn't uploaded to any server, and it isn't synced to iCloud — your notes sync across your devices, your recordings don't.

Is Nib's free tier really unlimited?

Transcription, notes and search: yes, no limits — they run on your machine and cost nothing to serve. Recordings: a free recording stops at 30 minutes per session, but there's no monthly cap and no limit on how many you make. Pro removes the per-recording cap. The cloud AI features need Pro or a one-time credit pack, since those cost real money per use.

Do my notes train an AI model?

No. Nib doesn't train on your data, and the providers behind the AI summaries are on no-retention terms. Otter's privacy policy, by contrast, states that it trains its AI on de-identified audio recordings and transcriptions.

Can I use Nib without an account?

Yes. There's no sign-up, no email, and no account. You download it and press record.

How much is Nib?

Recording, transcription and search are free. Pro is ¥800/month or ¥6,500/year for the AI features, and if you'd rather not subscribe, credit packs start at ¥300 and don't expire into a recurring charge. Prices appear in your local currency on the App Store.

Does Nib capture the other person on a Zoom call?

On the Mac, yes — it captures system audio, so both sides of a Zoom or Meet call land in the transcript. Still on-device.